


The Art of Deception

by almcvay1



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4631721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almcvay1/pseuds/almcvay1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man who surrendered to the FBI said he was Raymond Reddington. Things aren't always as they seem, though. (On hiatus for now)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everything About Me is a Lie

**Author's Note:**

> So thoroughly disclaimed. I was minding my own business when this bunny...

The man in the box said his name was Raymond Reddington. He had been fingerprinted, strip-searched, photographed, and the evidence was conclusive. The man who surrendered himself in the lobby of the FBI building this morning was Raymond Reddington.

Things are not always as they seem.

Elizabeth Keen was a profiler. She briefly studied Red’s criminal file before walking in to take her seat. Red smiled at her as though he could read her every thought. He was shackled to the chair, the chair bolted to the floor, restrained like a particularly dangerous animal. It seemed…excessive. Especially for a man who was every bit of fifty years old, losing his hair, and going a bit soft around the middle. But in all honesty, Lizzie was glad for those safeguards, because it had only taken a moment under the bright lights in the cavernous room to realize that Raymond Reddington was a predator.

She didn’t like the sizzle of electricity under her skin as his gaze traveled over her. She didn’t care for the slant and quirk of his lips as he stared her down from twenty feet away. He was the one locked into a chair, so why did it feel like she was the captive audience? There was not enough coffee in the world for days like this.

“Agent Keen, what a pleasure.”  His voice made her fingers want to tremble, so she laced them together in her lap, crossing her legs, almost mocking his inability to mirror her posture. The arch of a single brow was the only acknowledgement of her petty act.

Less than half an hour later, Agent Elizabeth Keen is shaking like a leaf in the wind, braced against a stall door in the ladies room. That man knew more about her life than she herself did. She didn’t know him, had never seen him before and yet he looked at her so intimately, with such tenderness. It didn’t make sense.

She wanted to call her husband Tom, but her fingers were trembling and she couldn’t dial. He was at school anyway. Agent Ressler was pounding on the door to the ladies room; it was time to go save the girl. She had to pull it together. It was time to put aside the fact that nothing about this whole day was normal, or what she expected, and do her job.

Smoke and chlorine fumes burned Lizzie’s eyes and nose as she stared at the wreckage on the bridge. She hadn’t saved the girl. Zamani’s men had taken her and she, Lizzie, had failed. She brushed off the EMTs and commandeered one of the SUVs to drive back to the Post Office.

He was still locked up in the bulletproof cage where she had left him. Sitting as though he had no worries, nowhere to be. They were going to agree to his immunity deal, Lizzie knew they would eventually. Cooper had already agreed to remove the restraints and let him out of the Post Office. Agent Ressler and two other men in FBI flak jackets were filing in now, to release him. Even though Lizzie knew there was no way he could see her here in this tiny room, she could still feel his eyes on her through the glass.

Blood was everywhere. Lizzie couldn’t process it, couldn’t look at it. She had come home from work to find her husband tied to a chair, bloodied and beaten, and Zamani, the very man they had been trying to find, with a knife at his throat.

Now she was at the hospital and Tom was on a ventilator. She couldn’t shake some of the things Zamani had said to her. Lizzie left the room without a backwards glance and went to find the only person who could tell her what had happened to her life.

Her rage broke over her like a tidal wave of heat. Lizzie had always had a temper. It had been a very long time, however, since she had been so close to losing control of it. Reddington merely stared at her as she accused him of sending Zamani after her husband, only blinked when she cleared a table with a swipe of her arm.

“He said you were obsessed with me? Is that true?”

Again there was no answer.

“Why do you act as though you know me? You and I have never met. Never! And now my boss is looking at me suspiciously, my husband is in the hospital and my dining room is covered in blood, all because of you!”

“You’re going to want to replace the carpet. You’ll never get the blood stains out.” The blasé response was far too much for Lizzie’s shaky control. The metal pen was in her hand before she could think it through. And as she stabbed it into his carotid artery, felt his sharp gasp at the pain, she couldn’t help considering the bizarre intimacy of the act. The way her hand gripped his shoulder, his hand over hers on his neck, her face close enough to his to smell his aftershave.

She stepped back and pulled the pen out, calling for medics immediately. As they swarmed the room, she slipped out, and went back to what had been her home.

It was midnight, and Reddington was correct. She couldn’t scrub the blood out. So the sunrise saw her pulling up the carpet with the last of the pent-up rage. What kind of person was she that she almost killed a man in anger today? How had she let him pull her strings like that?

She couldn’t let it happen again. She needed to know why he knew her, how he knew her. She stared at the hardwood floor of her dining room. Maybe they could just have the floors redone. They seemed in good enough shape, just needed cleaning really. There was a spot there in the corner, where it looked like some repair work was done recently. A closer examination revealed that it was a hole cut into the floor, cleverly covered up. As she pried up the lid, she wondered if this was wise. Whatever was in the box that she had pulled out was not going to be anything good. If she opened the lid, nothing could go back to the way it used to be.

Weapons. Cash. Passports. Tom’s face on all of it.

Things were never as they seemed.


	2. Masquerade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where we start to depart from canon a bit. Un-beta'd and not mine.

Agent Elizabeth Keen felt as though she had fallen down a rabbit hole. The fall was long and dark and she very much doubted that she would wind up in wonderland at the end. She had yet to find one aspect of her life that had not proven false. Her husband was a liar, possibly a dangerous spy, for reasons Lizzie couldn’t begin to guess. She had tried to believe in him, to restore her faith in their relationship and found herself…not up to the task. But every day she put on her happily married mask, every day was a masquerade. She was tired of trying to guess what everyone was hiding.

Raymond Reddington was the only person who hadn’t lied to her; which was almost odd considering he was a notorious criminal. He didn’t always tell her everything, in fact, he never told her everything, but he didn’t lie. He was, unlike some men she had married, exactly what he seemed to be. But he still knew too much, and far too often she found herself wanting to shiver under the heat of his gaze. His speech was so perfectly eloquent and civilized that the occasional innuendo left her gaping like a fish, cheeks flushed bright pink, and he would just smirk at her and keep talking.

Then everything seemed to hit the wall at once, her life shattered into pieces and she found herself on Reddington’s doorstep. She found him in a basement workshop, tinkering with the same music box he had been working on before. He glanced up once and then stopped what he was doing and looked at her more closely, studying her face. She wondered if he could see the tear tracks on her cheeks, or if she had rivers of black mascara painted on like a Greek mask of tragedy. He offered her a seat on a stool next to him and said nothing. Everything he could say, such as “I warned you” or “I told you so”, she expected all of that to come spilling from his lips like water from a faltering dam. But the dam held, and Reddington was silent. She found that, as much as he could talk and tell stories and play court jester, when it was just them, he was often simply quiet. Lizzie wondered which Red was real, and which was a character he played.

“Tom’s gone.” The words slipped out without any passion. She felt his calm demeanor wrap around her like a blanket.  His hands once again moved to their work. It looked to Lizzie as though he was just putting the finishing touches on it.

“So I gathered. I’m sorry about it.”

“I guess it isn’t your fault, really. Is it?”

Red didn’t answer this time. He was winding the music box using the key on the side. The first tinkling chords of “Masquerade” from Phantom of the Opera made tears spring to Lizzie’s eyes.

“I had a music box that played that song. Sam gave it to me for Christmas or a birthday, I can’t remember which, but when I was young, and felt sad for any reason, Sam would wind up my music box and hum along with it. He would hold me and tell me that I would be okay. “ Lizzie looked at Red in the half-light of the workshop. Searching his face for anything that would help her figure out how he knew her so well.

“How did you know? You’ve been working on this thing for weeks now. As though you knew…that Tom…would give himself away…” Lizzie trailed off, realizing that the man beside her had known what she herself would not admit. On their second operation together, at a restaurant in Quebec, he had asked her, “What if I told you everything you think you know about yourself is a lie?” She had shrugged it off as him toying with her. Now she was forced to really wonder if she knew herself as well as she had thought.

Her head was spinning so much, swarming with unanswered questions and lost hopes for a normal life; she closed her eyes and felt his arm come around her shoulder, pulling her into his chest. She could feel the fine cotton of his shirt against her face, dampening as tears emerged again. He laid his cheek against the crown of her head, and she could hear him humming softly.

“Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you…”

Two weeks later, Lizzie laid her head against the staircase of her home and wondered why she hadn’t simply stayed in the basement with Reddington. But no, she had asked him to find Tom for her, she had questions, she wanted answers. Now she had them, some of them, and they brought her little peace. It had taken longer than she wanted to free herself from the handcuffs. The spindle of the staircase would have to be replaced. She stood in her now completely destroyed living room, marveling at the absurdist comedy her life was becoming. The headlines could read “FBI agent handcuffed to staircase by former husband, with own cuffs.” Lizzie huffed a sigh and rolled her eyes, thinking that was just what Red would say.

Red. Tom had looked so…earnest when he restrained her.

“He’s not who or what you think, Liz. He’s not a good guy. You know where the key is under the lamp, I know you know. Take it and go to the First National Bank in Georgetown. Learn the truth.”

More lies? Perhaps. Or a more sinister form of torture, lying with the truth. Lizzie shoved the toppled bookcase back up onto the wall, making her way to the dining room and the lamp she had disassembled after seeing the surveillance footage of Tom doing the same.

“Masquerade…you can fool any friend who ever knew you…”


	3. Lies My Father Told Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's going to be a bumpy ride. But stay with me. Un-beta'd and disclaimed.

The room at the bank was chilly. Lizzie couldn’t feel it. She stared at the documents in her hand with disbelieving eyes. Her initial reaction was utter revulsion; queasiness tied her stomach in a knot. Now she simply stared. At the birth certificate. At her shaking hands.

He was her father.

It was impossible. But her birth certificate said it was true. Unless it wasn’t real. She would hardly put it past her husband-formerly-known-as-Tom to plant such a document for her to find. Fortunately, she knew someone who could verify it, and keep their mouth shut about it. She slid the manila envelope into her bag and returned the safe deposit box to the bank officer outside the door.

Aram was happy to do the small favor that she asked of him. Lizzie liked him as a colleague, he seemed genuinely kind. The only thing that gave her pause was the way he studied her when they conversed, with something that looked like sympathy in his dark brown eyes. Sometimes, Aram saw too much. That underlying sympathy was in evidence now as he sat across from her at the coffee shop near the Post Office. He slid a few printouts across the table for her to see.

“The birth certificate is real. I verified it with multiple sources both state and federal. Mr. Reddington is your father.”

She gave him a wan smile of thanks. Why did it seem like he wanted to add something like “I’m sorry,” before he slipped away from the table? Leaving her with her thoughts.

This was an ugly kettle of fish. Her cell phone beeped and flashed Red’s number; she drew a deep breath and answered.

“Lizzie, how are you?”

“Uh…I’m great, Red. Just peachy, really.”

“I have some information for you about Tom and his employer. We should meet. How about dinner? I know a wonderful restaurant in Georgetown. You’ll want to change clothes though; dusty Federal suits are frowned on.”

“So what am I supposed to wear?” The moment it was out of her mouth, she knew it was a mistake. She put her hand to her lips, as though she could shove the words back inside. But it was too late.

“Well, if you are asking for my preference…” his voice was almost a drawl, slowing and getting deeper with each syllable, and Lizzie fought against the urge to shudder, that same vague nausea washing over her again.

“No. I’m not. I only meant…you know what, never mind. What’s the name of the place, I’ll meet you there at seven.”

“I’d be happy to pick you up, Lizzie.”

Oh for god’s sake, Lizzie took a breath and the knot in her stomach tightened.

“No, I’ll meet you. It’s fine.”

It was almost midnight when she stumbled through the door of her house. She’d had too much wine at dinner. She shouldn’t have driven home. She tripped trying to remove her high heels and collapsed face first on the couch. Her living room looked empty now that she had gotten rid of all the furniture that her fight with her ex-husband had destroyed. Lizzie was becoming fond of the minimalism of the single couch and chair. She missed her coffee table though.

The effort to push herself to a standing position almost didn’t seem worth it, but she shuffled clumsily into her kitchen to grab a cold bottle of water. She was going to need some aspirin and a lot of water to fend off the hangover. Lizzie leaned against the island, cursing herself silently for drinking so much. Red had noticed it as well, actually frowning at her when she had refilled her wine glass. The restaurant had been lovely, the food sublime, but the company…it was sincerely disturbing to listen to his flirtatious banter. The most disturbing part was how hard it was to force herself not to respond.

The bottle of water slipped to the floor as she covered her face with her hands. Being in Reddington’s company was usually stimulating on a strange level for Lizzie, almost like a caffeine buzz. She couldn’t understand why it was still affecting her in that way, given her recent revelation. Was she just that sick, her psyche that twisted that part of her didn’t care?

No. It was not going to be the case. This was going to stop right now.

“I’m finished.” She felt somehow better, having declared her intent to the empty kitchen. She scooped her water off the floor and walked determinedly upstairs to her room. Tomorrow, she would go and see Cooper. She would tell him she could no longer work with Reddington. She was done with this madness.


	4. Who Are You?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are still with me, thanks! Love to the Gutterbugs for all the support!

The name Berlin was a constant echo in Lizzie’s ears. It was as though a labyrinth had sprung up in an empty field. Her meeting with Cooper went as well as could be expected with a raging hangover and a huge chip on her shoulder. Naturally, Reddington was already there when she walked in; only her professional pride kept her from turning on her heel and walking out. The outcome wasn’t what she had hoped for, but for now, she had more pressing matters to think about.

There was a viral outbreak at a bank downtown and somehow it was all connected to Berlin and Tom. The entire team was on a razor edge; even Reddington was tense and less loquacious than usual. He waited until they were on his jet to broach the subject of her sudden desire to leave the task force.

“You know, Lizzie, if you leave, everyone on the task force will go back to their normal lives. Except you. Your life will still be what it is right now. You will have no job, no husband and Sam will still be dead.“

She stared at him in outraged disbelief. The frustration she had bottled up since last night poured through her like molten brass into a bullet mold. She flew from her seat and stood over him, leaning down so she could see his eyes when she spoke.

“You say that as though I am somehow responsible for losing those things in my life, Red. My husband, my father and my job, my whole life, you are the reason that all of those things are gone! You are the one who took them all away from me! Did you even realize that? Are you even sorry for it?” Her face was less than two inches from his; she could count the flecks of gold in the green of his eyes. He stared back at her for a long moment, and then pressed his lips together, and looked away from her.

She slumped on to the bench seat behind her, wondering why he always provoked her, wishing she could hold her temper with him. All her life, she had worked to discipline her emotions, building careful walls to keep people at a distance, then Reddington shows up and they were no more than lines drawn in the sand. Gone.

When Red spoke his voice was so quiet, she almost didn’t hear it.

“I do feel sorry about it, Lizzie. I know the havoc I’ve wreaked on your life. Even though maybe all I’ve done is show you the cracks that were already there, I can understand the pain of losing what you’ve known for so long. Even though it was all a lie.”

She stared at him in wary disbelief. That was possibly the most sincere thing she had ever heard him say. The man would never cease to surprise her.

Two nights later, an exhausted, bereft Lizzie hauled a bagful of Chinese takeout she didn’t recall buying up the stairs of her house to find Raymond Reddington waiting for her on the couch. She refused to even acknowledge him, merely dropped her purse on the chair and carried the food to the kitchen.

“Lizzie, you can’t ignore me forever. Don’t make me stay here all night; I really hate sleeping on couches.”

“You’re free to leave any time, Red.”

“So you do speak.” He was chuckling to himself when Lizzie stormed in, furious, again.

“Do you think this is funny? Meera is dead, because of my former husband, who is missing, and Berlin is still out there. Look at me, Reddington, and tell me how funny you think this whole situation?”

He looked poleaxed for exactly one moment before the mask snapped into place. He stood and shrugged off his suit jacket, hanging it on the coat rack in the foyer.

“I’m sorry about Meera, Lizzie. She seemed like a decent person. I’m sure you’ll understand that while I’m not altogether sorry about the late Mr. Keen, I am sorry you were forced into that choice.”

Lizzie glared at him. She was so tired of this dance, this deceptive tango.

“I seem to be surrounded by death, since you came along Red. But, despite all the best efforts, you’re still here.”

He smiled at her macabre suggestion. “Oh, you are definitely your father’s daughter, Lizzie. You have all his finer qualities. And a few of his less admirable qualities.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say to her.

Lizzie shoved him back hard against the door. She wanted to punch something, preferably him for the inappropriate feelings he stirred inside. She felt…sick, twisted, even deviant ever since Tom had left that key on his way out the door.

“You should know, shouldn’t you? You are sick, you know that?”

Red looked at her as though she were a grenade without a pin.

“Sick? That’s a new one. Why the recent addition to my already colorful list of failings?”

“Because of this!”

She reached into her pocket for the folded sheet of paper, the photocopy she’d made of the birth certificate from the file. Mother listed as Katarina Rostova of the Soviet Union, father: Raymond Reddington, US Naval Officer, Bethesda, Maryland. Lizzie felt nauseous every time she read the words. This man was her father.

Red reached up and slowly removed the paper from her fist and smoothed the wrinkles before unfolding it. She watched his face as he read it. What if he hadn’t known? What if her mother had never told him she was pregnant?

He finished his perusal of her birth record and refolded the paper. His smile was almost sad now, as though he was sorry for her pain and confusion.

“How long have you had this? Who gave it to you?”

“Tom. Before he disappeared. Last week.”

He stepped away from the door and she allowed it. The strength granted her by her initial fury was gone now. She slumped into the chair and scrubbed her hands over her face. Reddington sat carefully on the couch, watching her with…pity perhaps? Who could tell what the canny bastard was thinking?

“So for a week or more, you’ve been operating under the assumption that I’m your father. Well, that makes some things more reasonable.”

“Lizzie, look at me.” She looked up reluctantly. Hating the way he could make her feel awkward.

“You are, indeed, Raymond Reddington’s daughter.” Lizzie felt the room begin to spin.

“I’m not who you think I am, Lizzie.”


	5. The Devil You Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, un-beta'd and disclaimed.

“You’re Raymond Reddington, the FBI’s fourth most wanted, career criminal and traitor to his country. We checked the records, the medical records, dental records. We verified your identity before you made it into the box.“ Lizzie shook her head until she thought she could hear her brain rattle. None of this made any sense. But she couldn’t deny the feeling of relief when he assured her they were not related in any way.

“The thing about records, though…” he trailed off, his gaze sliding away from hers in that way she knew meant he would try not to tell her what she wanted to know.

“No, Reddington. You don’t get to hold back on this. I’ve been making myself sick with guilt for almost two weeks; you have to tell me what you did.”

“Why so overcome with guilt, Lizzie? Surely not for treating your father like a criminal?” He watched her with a sly smile. He knew. He had to know how she felt about him. Lizzie thought she had hidden it so well, but he always knew everything. Right now, at this moment, however, she wanted to strangle him with her bare hands.

“I was at school with Raymond Reddington, the man who was your father. We were friends of a sort. We both went on to careers in Intelligence, but Raymond went…sideways. He got romantically involved with a CI, your mother, and then became involved with all kinds of unsavory people.”

“He was a traitor? Like you?”

He still flinched a little when his treason was mentioned.

“We had another mutual friend, who worked in the Department of Records; so when everything that happened…happened, he made the switch in the files.”

“But the Navy would know they’d been changed.”

“This was the 1980s, Lizzie. Computer data wasn’t so prevalent or reliable. So once it was done, there was little reason to question the changes.”

“So you stole my father’s identity.”

“Well I didn’t really steal it. Perhaps I appropriated it. After all, he was no longer in need of it.”

Lizzie stared at him from where she perched on the chair. For just a fleeting moment, she thought maybe he would tell her that her father was still alive. But, given the circumstances, she would imagine that was not a possibility. After all, what man would let another man, even a friend; walk off with his name and his life?

Reddington walked to the kitchen and began to fill the kettle with water, as Lizzie turned to stare at him. The man was truly remarkable. She chuckled a little to herself, which of course, he heard.

“Something amusing, Lizzie?” He sat the kettle on the burner and turned up the flame, and then began to search the cabinets for cups. Lizzie sidled casually into the kitchen, opened the dishwasher and pulled out two mugs.

“Not really. Here, we just have this huge confrontation and you tell me that you stole my father’s name, and now you’re making tea. You’d fiddle while Rome burned, I bet.”

Red looked askance at the mugs on the counter and shot Lizzie a smile.

“I don’t see anything on fire at the moment. But then, you aren’t cooking are you?” The little jab worked. Lizzie’s eyes narrowed and she flounced out of the kitchen.

She sat on her couch and listened to Nero tuning up in the kitchen. The whistle of the kettle, the odd clicks and clangs as he made the tea. It was a weird domestic backdrop to a life that was beginning to resemble a Mamet play. Lizzie wondered if she would ever be able to take anything at face value again. Would she ever be able to trust that people were who and what they said they were? At this point she was honestly beginning to doubt it. She looked up at Reddington as he entered the room with two mugs, piping hot. He set his on the end table before he placed hers in her hands, wrapping his hand around hers on the handle before he let go. Lizzie blew a bit across the surface of the hot tea and took a cautious sip before she set it on the floor at her feet. She really needed a new coffee table.

Reddington sipped his tea delicately, watching her from the corner of his eye. So when the first tear slid down her ivory skin, he had already set his beverage aside. Lizzie stared into nothingness and let the tears fall. Everything was crumbling under her feet, she had no solid ground. When Red took one of her hands in his, lacing their fingers together, she realized that she had spoken that thought aloud.

“I don’t know who to trust or who to believe anymore, Red. Everything is just…” she trailed off as the hot tears came faster and her breath began to hitch. Red squeezed her hand, stroking the smooth skin with a callused thumb soothingly.

“You can trust me, Lizzie. I will be your solid ground.”


	6. One Man's Art

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for hanging with me for this story. It's been a challenge. The poem you will see quoted in this chapter is Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art". Un-beta'd and disclaimed.

_“The art of losing isn’t hard to master_ …” Red’s voice was a graveled lullaby in her ears as she lay curled on her couch, her head resting on his thigh. He stroked her hair absently as he read aloud to her from what looked like an old college literature textbook. She really should see about cleaning off her book shelves. The last bitter storm of tears had subsided at last and Lizzie was exhausted. She’d half-heartedly suggested that Red might find better company elsewhere as her instinct was always to crawl inside herself rather than fully express her grief and confusion, especially when it could be seen by others. Reddington had merely looked at her and sipped his tea, pulling her into his chest and shoulder when the sobs finally emerged from her throat, although she nearly strangled herself trying to quiet them. Eventually he had taken both her hands in his larger one and cupped her face with the other.

“You are allowed to feel something, Lizzie. No matter what it may be.”

Her tenuous control shattered and she wept as she hadn’t since she was a young child, waking from terrible nightmares in the dark. Her eyes grew tired as she listened to Red reading softly and she slipped into a dreamless sleep.

_“Then practice losing further, losing faster…”_

She woke to the sound of her alarm, with a head that felt stuffed full of cotton wool; she tried to shake off the last of the crying jag. She couldn’t recall going to bed, but she knew that she must have done so, there was no way Reddington had carried her upstairs. She was wearing her bra and underwear from yesterday, and at that point Lizzie decided that trying to remember the intricate details was a lost cause. She turned on the shower and stepped beneath the pounding spray.

The Post Office was the same as it ever was; ugly yellow freight elevator and all. But Lizzie felt lighter walking in today than she had in weeks, even with the weight of loss still upon her. She paused in front of the clear pin boards where all the information on Berlin was displayed, her eyes traveling over the data they’d gathered. She saw Reddington approach her in the plexiglass reflection. He was all sharp creases and crisp lines; you would never know he spent most of the evening reading to a sleeping woman on an uncomfortable couch. He stood close behind her and she felt him slip something into her hand. A paper bag from a bakery. She turned to him in question and his smile was a ghost across his lips.

“Just a bagel. You should eat more. You need fuel.” She smiled her thanks as she made her way to her office, with him on her heels. The bagel was still warm when she pulled it out of the bag, blueberry with cream cheese and she was suddenly ravenous. Red dropped his hat on her desk and seated himself in the only other chair in the room. He looked even more pleased with himself than usual, a feat Lizzie would have sworn was impossible.

“Berlin is a puppet, Lizzie.”

She frowned at him as she finished the bite of breakfast. She had suspected he knew more than he was telling the task force, but her personal drama had quickly eclipsed the case she was supposed to be working. There was a twinge of guilt for letting that happen, but she set it aside to deal with later.

“What does Berlin want?”

“He wants me. Preferably dead, if I had to guess. Someone has been telling tales out of school, you see, whispering rumors designed to bait an already-rabid dog.”

Lizzie reached for a napkin in the drawer of her desk. Her mind already chasing a dozen ideas of what Red could possibly have done to Berlin to warrant this kind of response.

“Do you know the source of these whispers, Red? You say Berlin is a puppet, so who’s pulling the strings?”

“Nothing certain yet, but I have several very good ideas.”

She sat back in her desk chair, swiveling slowly as she always did when she was thinking.

“ _I lost two cities, lovely ones_ …” she glanced up to find him watching her intently, and realized she must have spoken aloud.

“What? It’s from that poem you were reading last night. Must’ve got stuck in my head.” Red merely arched an eyebrow, smiling.

_“Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love)…”_ he let the quote linger in the stale air of her office. Lizzie was uncertain what to make of him when they were alone like this. He seemed like his usual self on the surface, but when he looked at her, she could see the heat below the casual façade. Like a banked fire, embers glowing red in the darkness. She didn’t understand, and right now, she didn’t want to.

Whatever Red was thinking, he evidently put it out of his mind, as he stood abruptly, palming his hat back onto his head, straightening the brim as was his habit.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find out what Berlin has lost.”

Lizzie tried to focus her attention on the reports she was trying to catch up on. She’d let so many things slide for the last month. Her rage and guilt and grief had almost consumed her, so having something else to focus on was a welcome respite. She knew that her involvement with Reddington was a dangerous game, of course. But the reality she faced was that there was little else in her life. Even her dog was gone.

An hour later she gave it up as a bad job. Time to go find Red. She waved to Aram and Ressler as she stepped into the elevator and listened to the ancient machinery grind as she descended slowly. The doors opened and Lizzie grabbed her keys and cell phone from her bag, she was flipping through the contacts to find Red’s number when she heard the screech of tires. The keys fell to the ground unheeded, as she fumbled for her weapon at her hip, turning slowly, trying to locate the source of the danger she could feel. There were no further sounds though, no doors slamming, no voices. Her eyes were still adjusting to the lower light level, but she thought she saw a movement near the stairs. The thought that it could be a trap wasn’t even fully formed when another shadow slipped from behind a vehicle.

Lizzie’s shout of alarm was cut off abruptly by the butt of a gun. She collapsed to the concrete floor of the underground parking garage. Her cell phone lay smashed where she’d dropped it. Men in black hooded sweatshirts loaded her limp body into the waiting van. They drove away quickly with their prize.

_“Though it may look like (Write it) a disaster.”_


	7. The Man Who Wasn't There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem quote comes from the poem "Antigonish" by Hughes Mearns. Enjoy! Thoroughly disclaimed as usual.

Elizabeth Keen was considered among her peers to be a good profiler, with a solid intuition and observational skills. Head throbbing as she slowly regained consciousness and took in her surroundings, she wondered if she should just turn in her badge already, because she sucks at this. Tom Keen knelt in front of her, checking the zip ties that bound her ankles to the chair. His hair was a little longer since she had seen him last, his glasses were gone; along with almost any trace of the man she had once married. She was staring at a stranger, wearing the face of someone she thought she knew.

This was becoming a theme.

“Hey, babe,” his voice was the same, and the crooked half smile. It drove Lizzie mad, like Halloween when she was a little girl. The masks of cartoon characters and superheroes had scared her witless, Sam never understood why and young Lizzie couldn’t explain the terror of realizing that under the colorful, smiling face was another face, a completely different and unknown one. All you could see was an illusion, and as she grew older, she came to realize that those illusions hid far scarier monsters than she knew as a child.

_“Yesterday, upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there…”_ She’s quoting obscure poetry and it’s making her laugh for some reason. The man wearing Tom’s face looked at her strangely.

“They must have hit you harder than I realized.”

She rolled her eyes skyward. “Well, yes, Secret Agent Ex, I guess you could assume head trauma at this point. And I’m so done being your punching bag. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Because I doubt sincerely that you are the one in charge here.”

“Well, he did say you were smart, Ms. Keen.” There was another voice, raspy with disuse, thick Slavic accent. She turned her head slowly; well aware that one too-quick move would have her vomiting on her shoes.

“Who said I was smart? Who are you?”

“Your husband said you were smart.”

He came into her field of vision now, medium height, medium build, wearing a summer weight suit and no tie. He was almost unremarkable, except he seemed to be missing a hand.

“Well, not smart enough, evidently, or I never would have married him. You must be Berlin.”

He gave a tiny, almost courtly, bow.

“I need you to tell me where Raymond Reddington is. “ The barrel of the gun Tom now held at her knee gave the lie to the pleasant tone of the question.

Lizzie kept her eyes on Berlin.

“I don’t know where Reddington is, but I imagine he will find you very soon. You have something he wants, you see.”

“I have something he wants? I think you have that backwards, Ms. Keen. Typical of a head injury.”

“You have a story to tell. You’ve been after him all this time. He wants to know why. That is the biggest weakness of Raymond Reddington, his insatiable curiosity. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get his attention, and now you have it.”

The man called Berlin began to pace slowly, seemingly turning over her answer in his mind. Lizzie refused to look at the man with the gun. She couldn’t make him go away, but she could ignore him.

“Liz, you have to tell him…” he whispered and if she could have kicked him she would have done it.

“No, you don’t speak. You aren’t even real. You never were. You are just a trick of the light.” She hissed at him under her breath, keeping her eyes on Berlin, who was still lost in thought.

“I…”

“No. Shut up. “

He closed his mouth with a snap, jaw clenched, and she could see, from the corner of her eye, the person under the mask he wore, like a ghost in a long-abandoned house. Her skin felt like it was going to crawl off her bones. She closed her eyes, anything to make him go away.

Reddington was not far when the favor he called in finally paid off. Dembe passed him the phone in the backseat of the Mercedes. He had wondered how long Alan Fitch would dither about before he realized that it would be the wisest choice to let Red handle this problem, before it became a much larger problem.

“You have a location?”

“Yes. An abandoned café over near Union Market.”

Red hung up the phone and gave Dembe the address. He would be there in ten minutes.

The sound of gunfire made Lizzie’s eyes open wide. Berlin smiled.

“It appears you are correct. And lucky.”

Lizzie glanced around quizzically. Lucky wasn’t the word she would have used.

Her chair was spun around to face the door, the gun no longer at her knee but at the back of her head. She wondered if Reddington even knew she was here. She got her answer as he slipped inside behind Dembe, both with guns drawn. Surprise was a fleeting expression before he holstered his weapon. Dembe remained where he was, as always, on guard.

“Raymond Reddington, at last.”

“Well, fortunately I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome. But yes, I’m here. Maybe you would like to tell me why? And why is Elizabeth Keen here?”

“You know why. You know the story. Someone would have told it to you by now.”

“I know you lost your daughter. I’m so sorry about that. But I have been wracking my brains since I figured out who you were and I still can’t figure out what it is I’m supposed to have done to you.”

“You are the one who killed her!” Berlin is no longer calm. His eyes are bright with fury and unshed tears.

 “I have to ask you a question, before we go further. Who told you that I killed your daughter? Because they lied.”

“Or you lie.”

“Oh, everything about me is a lie. There’s no doubt about that. It’s just that the lie isn’t what you think. I didn’t kill your daughter.”

“I told myself that I would not stop until I had done the same thing to you that you have done to me.”

“So you are going to kill Agent Keen, why?”

“She is your daughter. Her father is Raymond Reddington.”

“Yes, her father is Reddington. But I’m not Raymond Reddington.”

He moved to Berlin, slowly reaching into his jacket pocket, walking past Lizzie with a nonchalance she knew he was faking.

“This is your daughter. She’s not actually dead. She defected and she ran and I’d imagine she’s probably not going to be happy to be found, but she is alive.”

Berlin stared at the paper in his hand as though it would burst into flames. He jerked his head at Tom who pulled away from Lizzie and the two of them disappeared out the front door of the café. Lizzie sucked in a breath so deep she began to get dizzy. Her head lolled a bit on her shoulders as she flirted with unconsciousness.

“Lizzie. Dembe, cut her legs free. Lizzie, stay with me.”

Dembe and Red cut Lizzie out of her bonds and she stumbled from the chair on legs that threatened to collapse underneath her. Red slid an arm around her waist to steady her until she regained her balance.

She pushed away from him, slowly regaining the feeling in her extremities.

“Lizzie? You okay?”

“Yes I’m fine. You need to go after Berlin, Red. “

“Not until I’m sure you’re okay.”

“Red, go, I’m fine. It’s not the first time I’ve been tied up, you know?” As soon as the words left her mouth she wished them erased. Red’s jaw dropped for a moment, before he regained his composure and even the stoic Dembe’s eyebrows raised fractionally. Lizzie waited for the inappropriate comment but it never came. She waved them off and this time, they took her word.

Pistols raised; they moved towards the kitchen and the rear exit of the restaurant, sweeping right and left. Lizzie followed behind them but stopped to shake out the pins and needles feeling from her feet and hands. Red and Dembe moved out of her sight line and she heard a door being opened. She had just stepped inside the darkened kitchen, when a familiar arm slipped around her neck. The muzzle of the gun was cold as it dug into her neck. She didn’t hesitate, a twist of her body, a jab of the elbow and she grabbed the gun, trying to wrest it out of the grip of her former husband. They grappled for control of the trigger when Lizzie felt it under her finger. She pulled it, once and then again. The shocked expression on Tom’s face told her what she needed to know. Using the last of her strength, she shoved him through the swinging door and into the dining area. She watched him hit the counter and slide to the floor. Lizzie grabbed the gun, hearing the sirens approaching, ran to catch up with Red.

“Lizzie? Are you all right?” The rear door was thrown open and Red stepped back inside, gun still in hand. She smiled at him to show she was unharmed.

“Tom.”

His mouth compressed into that thin line again, eyes like cold green glass, as he began to move past her. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. She should be the one to finish this.

“No, Red, I’ll do it.”

“Be quick. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

He gave her hand a squeeze before stepping back outside and she turned to deal with her unfinished business. Reddish brown streaks marred the black and white tiles on the floor, but Tom Keen was nowhere in the room where she left him. She searched the booths, behind the counter, anywhere he could have hidden.

Tom Keen wasn’t there. 


End file.
